Union Club

Another single-family home that underwent major conversions is the Union Club. Built in 1809 for John Gore, the house at 8 Park Street underwent a complete remodeling in 1838 for Abbott Lawrence under the supervision of Gridley J. F. Bryant. The exterior below the fifth-floor addition as well as portions of the interior survive from that initial remodeling for one of the city's wealthiest families. Lawrence's house combines Greek Revival–style trim and English Regency–inspired wrought-iron balconies. The principal second-floor rooms, including the original Lawrence parlor, feature some of the finest surviving Greek Revival–style ornamentation in Boston. A group of patriotic Bostonians formed the Union Club here at the height of the Civil War and commissioned Gridley J. F. Bryant and John Hubbard Sturgis in 1863 to rebuild the ell and make other interior changes, such as the staircase and probably several of the first-, third-, and fourth-floor rooms. Peabody and Stearns added a fifth floor in the early 1880s, replacing the gable roof with dormers and attaching an iron balcony in the style of the existing ironwork. In 1896 Ball and Dabney internally incorporated the house next door at 7 Park Street and unified the facades by extending the cast-iron balconies and creating a fifth floor.